


Prelude

by Ludovico_is_my_homeboy



Series: Nocturne [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Carrier Stiles, Derek is dead, Dubious Consent, Gang member Chris Argent, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/Referenced Violence, Introspection, M/M, Mpreg, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, POV First Person, POV Stiles Stilinski, Prisoner of War, Rape/Non-con Elements, War Prize Stiles, Warning: Kate Argent, hand-wavy in terms of background details so sorry about that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 09:14:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28468839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ludovico_is_my_homeboy/pseuds/Ludovico_is_my_homeboy
Summary: An unwritten letter to Stiles and Derek's unborn child as a pregnant and bereaved Stiles grapples with the loss of his lover, the emergence of a mysterious new master, and the end of the world.
Relationships: Chris Argent/Stiles Stilinski, Possible future Chris Argent/Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, past Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski - Relationship
Series: Nocturne [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2085318
Comments: 10
Kudos: 70





	Prelude

Dear Peanut.

Your father is dead.

I’m sure now. It was never super likely he was alive but… anyway, I’m sure now. 

I know now.

They march us through the remains of the town, past destroyed and abandoned buildings, the burnt husk of everyone’s lives, and he is there.

He is there, body broken and piled up with the others. I can see his arm bent at an odd angle and the gash in his chest that must have ended it all for him.

But his face is unharmed, untouched. Beautiful. A single face in a sea of faces, some familiar and some not. They are all strangely peaceful now, eyes shut or blankly staring at the sky.

Your father’s eyes are shut, peanut.

Peaceful, but terrible, too.

Everything is peaceful and terrible now. Since the end, since the plague and the war and the end. Everything follows this same strange pattern, embodies this weird paradox.

We lived through the end, your dad and I, and experienced a peaceful existence in the terrible aftermath. We set up house in the place of our birth - the place your father returned to after years away and the one I never quite managed to escape from - and lived in the new normal. We buried the dead and built a new space and survived together.

For a little while, anyway. For an hour or a day or a year.

Long enough for the garden to grow.

Long enough to get you cooking inside of me.

Long enough for a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I, in my naivety, told your dad on one of the last days that as long as we were together we were alright, that there was hope, that it wasn’t the end.

I made a mistake, saying this out loud. In saying it I set up the dare, the cosmic wager. Hubristic, as my old coach used to say. I threw up a defiant middle finger at the universe.

I drew the ire of those gods who love to make mad those they would later destroy. The gods drive those idiot mortals crazy by taking up the bets they make, by saying ‘this far and no further? Well, let’s see how far you can really go until you break.’

This is the end.

I see your father, the face I loved that is empty now of the soft feelings that were all mine. I am saved from shattering completely at the sight by the suspicion – the strange conviction – I first felt days ago. The fearful sense that he was already dead.

You have to understand… it’s been a week, baby, or more since I saw him last.

And even I, a boy who never understood limits the way other people did, know better than to push luck that long.

I think I knew already, and so as devastating as it is to see him there it also isn’t a surprise – and surprises are the things that destroy you.

The sight of him kills me, strikes me dead, and I stumble but I don’t stop walking. It makes my soul a graveyard and I don't know how I do it but I don't stop.

I don’t fall, sweetheart.

Another of our group sees someone she knows and it shatters her, breaks her into a million pieces. She falls to the ground and wails and then our guards all fall upon her, start beating her.

Trigger-happy monsters, these marauding gangs that roam the wasteland of our world picking up anything shiny or sweet that crosses their path. Burning settlements and leaving nothing behind them.

Nihilism personified. No room for weakness for them.

I wonder if the fact that I am still walking makes me less than her, the woman who fell. I think maybe her devastation and open, uncensored grief makes her a better person than me. Makes her purer, more loving.

She had hope, still. She was shocked by the proof offered to her in clearly defined lines. Her loss of faith was sudden, total, and merciless.

I didn't. I wasn't. My sense of loss was gradual, the first pangs of it born of a deeper instinct, a nebulous fear.

My belief was already shaken before I saw the truth. I feel the beginnings of a survivor's guilt and wonder - does that mean my love was shaken, too?

Maybe I gave up on him. Do you think this, baby?

Do you blame me, peanut?

I’m not writing this down for posterity - I can’t, it’s just in my head now as I walk, just thoughts, an old habit used to control my own wandering mind - but maybe someday I will tell you about all of this and you’ll blame me.

You will think I challenged the gods, broke the rules, failed him, didn't keep a promise... all because I didn’t, in my heart of hearts, have faith that Derek was alive out there as he tried to fight off the raiders. All because I feared and then suspected and then knew without seeing that he was already dead. Because a voice deep inside me told me the terrible truth.

Sweet baby, you will never see your father’s face, so let me try to paint it for you in my head and hope that the image seeps into my blood and nourishes you and that you dream of him while you wait sleeping in the womb.

He is beautiful, dark, hair black as coal, sharp jaw, cheekbones for days, a tendency to furrow his brow so that it looks like he’s scowling… but he isn’t scowling, little peanut, he isn’t cross.

I’d tease him, call him sour-face, but he wasn’t. Not really. Not with me.

Never with me, or with you.

He's sweet, so sweet... only thoughtful sometimes. And when I'd tease him he’d give me a soft half-grin and say it was just the unfortunate shape of his face that made him look like a bruiser. His beautiful face, like he was some kind of carved-from-marble hero from old mythology. 

You're too young right now, baby, but when you're older and want to know how it is between lovers I'll tell you stories about him and what he looked like and what lit the fire between us that'll make your hair curl, will make you squeal and go red with embarrassment, will make you glow with secret warmth at the proof of how much we cared for each other. 

Dark eyes. Gentle hands. And strong, darling. He's so strong.

Stronger than me.

I’m trying to be strong. I’m walking past his broken body, his closed-forever eyes, and I’m trying so hard to be strong. I’m walking through the wreckage of my home and I am trying to be strong.

They were keeping us prisoner in the old hospital while the fighting died down. Women, Carriers, Omegas.

Those with a certain kind of value.

The raiders held us there while they cleaned up the rest – the pockets of resistance. Your father. Our friends. The remaining town leaders.

Wiped them out.

They march us to the square at the center of what used to be the town. When I was little, I would come here with your grandpa, your _d_ _ziadzia_ , who was Sheriff then, and we’d walk around the circle, see the statues of the long-dead city fathers, go to the park.

Your grandpa was strong, too, like your daddy.

He didn’t live to see this, and for the first time ever I’m glad.

They march us to the square and make us kneel in the grass and then it is time for the upper-tier commanders of this triumphant little gang to pick out their war prizes.

Darling, peanut, baby cakes… I am no one’s prize, and that’s entirely down to you, little mouse.

You are four months inside me and I am showing now, my little bean. I have always been thin and I’ve only gotten thinner since the world stopped turning and food became scarcer, and you are still very small but you are also quite obviously _there_. An unborn monument to your father and I.

Your dad called me clever, loyal, funny, protective, kind, and the world's best baker… but these things are nothing to men looking for silent, pliant fuck-toys to breed and keep for their pleasure.

He called me beautiful, too, and praised my eyes, my lips, my hands, drove me out of my mind with desire, mapped out constellations between the moles on my skin with his tongue… but this also means little when my stomach swells with the child of a man who is now dead.

You are a burden these men were denied the pleasure of creating.

I am kneeling in the wreckage of my life and you are saving me and damning me, baby – there is no safe harbor whether I am chosen as a prize by these men or not, and you are ensuring that no one choses me regardless.

They all take one look at my belly and then their eyes slide off me like rainwater. They pick someone else instead. Someone untouched, or nearly so, someone without such obvious baggage. 

Observant, too – your father called me observant. Your grandpa also said that about me, though not always with unadulterated joy. I was the bane of everyone’s existence when my curiosity was peaked and my eyes were open.

I don’t notice him at first, baby. He stands back from the main group, but he isn't hidden or hiding. He isn't small or demure, not physically or otherwise. He has a presence, and though I don't notice him right away I see him soon enough, find my gaze drawn to this mystery man.

He has a graying beard and a firmly set mouth and a straight stance. Like a military man, from the days before now. Almost aloof, except for a glint of something in his eyes I am too shaken and far away to parse.

The others move with the greed of ravenous wolves, but he watches and waits and evaluates carefully, unwilling to let desire cloud his judgment.

I watch him as he watches us. I get the sense that whatever he wants he will get, even if there is a prior claim. They will defer to him. He has that kind of look.

The others pluck people – friends, neighbors, and I doubt I’ll ever see them again after today – like sweets from a jar, with ragged lust but without much discrimination.

Sobs are muffled quickly. The victors crow over their spoils while the spoils take deep, semi-steadying breaths and try desperately to adjust their worldviews to accommodate this new reality.

Some man, older, balding, the leader of this merry band, is announcing something, playing at being ringleader. I can't hear him clearly over the blood rushing in my ears.

Believe me, sweetheart, we never saw them coming. So many died in the seemingly endless series of unfortunate events, the lingering decimation... why would anyone attack us now? In our grief, in thinking that now that the world had ended we had nothing left to lose, we forgot that there is always more to lose.

And we weren’t ready when they came.

A pack of monsters riding bikes and tricked-out trucks, armed with knives and crossbows and guns and a bad attitude towards the vulnerable in general.

The town caught fire while we were still sleeping unaware in our beds. Your father went out to try to protect us, the beautiful, brave idiot, and I never saw him again until I saw him peaceful and terrible and dead.

(And I will never, ever tell you this but a part of me - just a small part - hates Derek for that.)

My hand drifts down and cups my belly. I cradle you.

It's a stupid gesture. Useless. I can’t keep you safe, can’t comfort or protect you this way.

I should be alluring; I should try to seduce some of these men claiming their trophies. I should use those excellent observation skills your dad was so fond of and try to identify the gentle or weak ones in this pack of slobbering dogs. I should use what is left of my beauty and cleverness to get them to take me, to want me and protect me, and protect you by extension.

But all I can think of is your father’s gray-pale face, peaceful like he’s sleeping except for the streaks of mud and blood that I can not wipe away – not now, not ever. I can’t even do that small act. I'm denied that basic right given to the grieving spouse to clean the body and prepare it for the grave.

All I can think of is the fact that this has been taken from me and the fact that I can’t protect you from this, my love.

My baby, my peanut, the only thing that’s left for me. You're all I have left, and I can't protect you from this.

I can’t protect either of us from this.

I tilt my head up and look at the giant oak tree that marks the edge of the town square, and I think that shape of power is the shape of a tree and that I am just a single leaf on an outer branch, far away from the trunk, far away from the roots. Any minute now, in a stiff breeze, I will snap off completely and blow away.

I sense movement, a shadow falling across my line of sight, and I jerk back and lower my gaze quickly. I bite my tongue, my fast, sharp, unstoppable tongue, until it bleeds and I look down, submissive, in the hopes that doing so might save you and me.

I can’t save Derek, but I can try to save you, peanut, by biting my tongue until it bleeds and playing at surrender.

I fix my gaze on worn, muddy boots.

I am suddenly aware that the end of the selection process is near – there are wide gaps in the line of kneeling prizes, so few of us to choose from now. And those not chosen, I presume, will not be left alive when it's all over.

I don’t look higher than this new man’s knees for now.

“Really, Chris?” A second voice, a woman, and another pair of legs. She standing approximately at the man's right elbow.

The man doesn’t respond.

You know, now that I think about it, your father never really gave me a straight answer on his opinion of the afterlife. I did ask, once, about his beliefs, but all he did was waffle for a moment and then appease me with something vague. I wish I'd gotten something more concrete from him, now.

Too late, much too late, I wish for more time, more knowledge, more circumspection.

(Later I will mourn.)

“A skinny little Carrier? He’s pregnant,” the woman tries again.

“Then I know he’s fertile,” the man replies, voice sharp with irritation.

I want to flinch at the implication in his words but I don’t have the energy. Suddenly I feel utterly hollowed out and I doubt I could summon up anger or fear or anything else, even if I wanted to. Besides, with the frustration at the edges of the man's voice it seems like he is more concerned with shutting his companion up than with evaluating my objective worth.

“It’s my business, anyway,” he amends after a moment, somewhat more gently.

“Well, at least take another to go along with him. You can take two. Shit... more even. I know you know that.”

Sweetheart, I look up then. I can’t help it. It’s not smart or safe but at the end of the day I am who I am and I can’t help it.

I look up and see the man from before, the older one with a beard, the one who watches and waits. I look up and I'm pinned down by ice-blue eyes that lock onto mine and see and take so much more than I want to give. 

They see and take and then they crinkle slightly at the corners as his mouth turns up and twists into an unreadable expression... and that glint, peanut, that glint from before? I see it now, clearly, and it's not savage greed or juvenile lust or petty pomposity.

It is nothing more or less than simple, unvarnished _need_.

“No, Kate,” Chris says. “Just this one is fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it - I'm hoping to make this the first in a series and also later bring in Peter as another part of the relationship but tbh I haven't planned very far ahead because I'm chronically disorganized (feel free to insert dumpster fire gif here).
> 
> Please do comment and let me know what you think! I'm a little unsure about the POV style (I don't usually use it) so comments on preferences are certainly appreciated, or even if you just want to say hi that's cool too - I love to chat! Also do let me know if I missed any tags that should be included, I always inevitably forget one.
> 
> You all are awesome, stay safe and healthy! <3


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